Sixteen-year-old Laurie Pycroft has been making waves. Over the past few weeks he has founded a campaign called Pro-test and led a headlining protest march. He embodies the spirit of the citizenship curriculum: speaking out and taking an effective role in a democracy. Intriguingly, he has dropped out of mainstream education, finding school "frustrating" and "a bit slow", but he certainly makes an interesting model for those he has left behind in the classroom.

Pycroft is in the spotlight because he dared to support the building of the biomedical research centre in Oxford. He has entered the volatile and potentially dangerous debate on animal testing. It is a topic guaranteed to raise passions in the classroom, too. Before you embark on the topic, carry out an initial poll - who agrees and disagrees with animal testing (vivisection) - and keep a record of the results.

'Horrible practices'

The BBC has an excellent introduction to the topic in its Science and Nature pages www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/animalexperiments/index.shtml?tl1#events_info. Investigating the timeline will reveal that this is far from a modern issue. There has been a code of ethics for working on animals since 1831 and Queen Victoria condemned vivisections as "horrible practices". Browse the timeline and ask students to label each entry as pro-experiments, anti- or neutral.

Encourage students to dig out some of the facts behind this emotive issue. Focus pairs on creating a list of five factual questions (as opposed to ethical ones). Join one pair with another to discuss the questions until they agree on five key questions. Allow research time. The Home Office FAQ http://scienceandresearch.homeoffice.gov.uk/animal-research is a good starting point. (More detailed information, for older students, is available at http://altweb.jhsph.edu/faqs.htm).

Ask students to consider what regulations they would expect to govern animal experimentation, then explore the regulations listed www.rds-online.org.uk/pages. The 1986 Animals Act gives the UK some of the strictest regulations in the world. Establishments must use the minimum number of animals and can use cats, dogs or primates only when there is no other alternative (in less than 0.5% of cases). Mice and rodents, bred for the laboratory, account for 84% of testing. The use of great apes, such as chimpanzees, is banned. Research premises are inspected, often without warning, and a vet must be on call at all times. Licences for projects are granted through weighing up animal suffering against the potential benefits of the research.

Of course, balancing animal suffering against the benefits for humans is the ethical question at the heart of the debate. How can we justify 2.7m experiments a year on live animals in the UK? The number of experiments has halved over the past 30 years www.rds-online.org.uk/pages, but this may cut little ice with opponents. And then there are the medical benefits. All major advances have been possible because of experiments on animals. Indeed, by law, new drugs must be tested on two live mammals.

For some opponents, argument is not enough, and they are prepared to break the law. Consequently, the new research centre in Oxford has become a battleground, with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) threatening a "campaign of devastation" against anyone linked with the university. Provide an outline of the ALF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_Front and debate such tactics.

Many scientists and their families now have to live within a security net. Listen to the story of the scientist Clive Page www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/tested.shtml, and ask students to write a diary, in the person of Clive's son or daughter, revealing how they feel.

Once students have had a chance to examine the issues, repeat the vote. Have views changed? Compare their results with the Mori research, which showed that 75% of the population accept animal experimentation for medical purposes www.medicalprogress.org/reference/mori.cfm. Finally, ask students to make predictions: what will the situation be in 30 years' time, and what will their own contribution be? Students can explore a complete key stage 3 online lesson about animal testing on learnnewsdesk, the Guardian's news website for children www.learnthings.co.uk.